The Plague by Albert Camus. Part 4 Chapter 5

All Souls Day that year was very different to what it had been in former years. True the weather was seasonable, there had been sudden change and the great heat had given place to mild autumnal air. As in other years a cool wind blew all day and big clouds raced from one horizon to the other trailing shadows over the houses upon which fell again when they had passed the pale gold light of a November sky. The first waterproofs made their appearance, indeed one was struck by the number of glossy rubberised garments to be seen. The reason was that our newspapers had informed us that 200 years previously during the great pestilences of southern Europe the doctors wore oiled clothing as a safeguard against infection. The shops had seized this opportunity of unloading their stock of out of fashion waterproofs which their purchasers fondly hoped would guarantee immunity from germs. But these familiar aspects of All Souls Day could not make us forget that the cemeteries were left unvisited. In previous years the rather sickly smell of chrysanthemums had filled the street cars while long lines of women could be seen making pilgrimage to the places where members of their family were buried, to lay flowers on the graves. This was the day when they made amends for the oblivion and dereliction in which their dead had slept for many a long month. But in the plague year people no longer wished to be reminded of their dead because indeed they were thinking all too much about them as it was. There was no more question of revisiting them with a shade of regret and much melancholy. They were no longer the forsaken to whom one day in the year you came to justify yourself. They were intruders whom you would rather forget. This is why the Day of the Dead this year was tacitly but willfully ignored. As Cotard thrightly remarked, Taru noted that the habit of irony was growing on him more and more. Each day was for us a Day of the Dead. And in fact the bale fires of the pestilence were blazing ever more merrily in the crematorium. It is true that the actual number of deaths showed no increase but it seemed that plague had settled in for good at its most virulent and it took its deadly toll of deaths with the punctual zeal of a good civil servant. Theoretically and in view of the authorities this was a hopeful sign. The fact that the graft after its long rising curve had flattened out seemed to many, Dr Rishabh for example, reassuring. The graft's good today, he would remark, rubbing his hands. To his mind the disease had reached what he called high-water mark. Thereafter it could but ebb. He gave the credit of this to Dr Castell's new serum which indeed had bought off some quite unlooked-for recoveries. While not dissenting the old doctor reminded him that the future remained uncertain. History proved that epidemics have a way of recredessing when least expected. The authorities who had long been desirous of giving a fillip to the morale of the populace but had so far been prevented by the plague from doing so now proposed to convene a meeting of the medical corps and ask for an announcement on the subject. Unfortunately just before the meeting was due to take place Dr Rishabh too was carried off by the plague, then precisely at high-water mark. The effect of this regrettable event, which sensational as it was, actually proved nothing, was to make our authorities swing back to pessimism as inconsequentially as they had previously indulged in optimism. As for Castell, he confined himself to preparing his serums with the maximum of care. By this time no public place or building had escaped conversion into a hospital or quarantine camp, with the exception of the prefect's offices which were needed for administrative purposes and committee meetings. In a general way however, owing to the relative stability of the epidemic at this time, Riyadh's organisations were still able to cope with the situation, though working constantly at high pressure. The doctors and their helpers were not forced to contemplate still greater efforts. All they had to do was to carry on automatically so to speak. Their all but superhuman task. The pneumonic type of infection cases, which had already been detected, was now spreading all over the town. One could almost believe that the high winds were kindling and fanning its flames in people's chests. The victims of pneumonic plague succumbed much more quickly after coughing up blood-stained sputum. This new form of the epidemic looked like being more contagious as well as even more fatal. However the opinions of experts had always been divided on this matter. For greater safety all sanitary workers wore masks of sterilised muslin. On the face of it the disease should have extended its ravages but the cases of bubonic plague showing a decrease, the death rate remained constant. Meanwhile the authorities had another cause for anxiety in the difficulty of maintaining the food supply. Profiteers were taking a hand and purveying at enormous prices essential foodstuffs not available in the shops. The result was that poor families were in great straits while the rich went short of practically nothing. Thus, whereas plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality amongst our town folk, it now had the opposite effect and thanks to the habitual conflict of cupidities exacerbated the sense of injustice rankling in men's hearts. They were assured of course of the inerrable equality of death but nobody wanted that kind of equality. Poor people who were feeling the pinch thought still more nostalgically of towns and villages in the nearby countryside where bread was cheap and life without restrictions. Indeed they had a natural, if illogical, feeling that they should have been permitted to move out to these happier places. The feeling was embodied in a slogan shouted in the streets and chalked up on walls. Bread or fresh air. This half ironic battle cry was the signal for some demonstrations that, though easily repressed, made everyone aware that an ugly mood was developing among us. The newspapers, needless to say, complied with the instructions given them. Optimism at all costs. If one was to believe what one read in them our populace was giving a fine example of courage and composure. But in a town thrown back upon itself, in which nothing could be kept secret, no one had illusions about the example given by the public. To form a correct idea about the courage and composure talked about by our journalists you had only to visit one of the quarantine depots or isolation camps established by our authorities. As it so happens the narrator, being fully occupied elsewhere, had no occasion to visit any of them. I must fall back on Taru's diary for a description of the conditions in these places. Taru gives an account of a visit he made accompanied by Rambe. To the camp located in the municipal stadium. The stadium lies on the outskirts of the town between a street along which runs a car line and a stretch of wasteland extending to the extreme edge of the plateau on which the city is built. It was already surrounded by high concrete walls and all that was needed to make escape practically impossible was to post sentries at the four entrance gates. The walls served another purpose. They screened the unfortunates in quarantine from the view of people on the road. Against this advantage may be set the fact that the inmates could hear all day, though they could not see them, the passing streetcars and recognise by the increased volume of sound coming from the road the hours when people had knocked off work or were going to it. And this brought home to them that the life from which they would debarred was going on as before, within a few yards of them, and that those high walls parted two worlds as alien to each other, as two different planets. Teru and Rambe chose a Sunday afternoon for their visit to the stadium. They were accompanied by Gonzales, the football player with whom Rambe had kept in contact and who had let himself be persuaded into undertaking, in rotation with others, the surveillance of the camp. This visit was to enable Rambe to introduce Gonzales to the camp commandant. When they met that afternoon Gonzales' first remark was that this was exactly the time when, before the plague, he used to start getting into his football togs. Now that the sports fields had been requisitioned all that was of the past and Gonzales was feeling, and showed it, at a loose end. This was one of the reasons why he had accepted the post proposed by Rambe, but he made it a condition that he was to be on duty during weekends only. The sky was overcast and, glancing up at it, Gonzales observed regretfully that a day like this, neither too hot nor rainy, would have been perfect for a game. And then he fell to conjuring up, as best he could, the once familiar smell of embrocation in the dressing rooms. The stands crowded with people, the coloured shirts of the players showing up brightly against the tawny soil, the lemons at intermission, or bottled lemonade, that titillated parched throats with a thousand refreshing pinpricks. Teru also records how, on the way, as they walked the shabby outer streets, the footballer gave kicks to all the small loose stones. His object was to shoot them into the sewer holes of the gutters and, whenever he did this, he would shout, Goal! When he had finished his cigarette he spat the stub in front of him and tried to catch it on his toe before it touched the ground. Some children were playing near the stadium and, when one of them sent a ball towards the three men, Gonzales went out of his way to return it neatly. On entering the stadium they found the stands full of people. The field was dotted with several hundred red tents, inside which one had glimpses of bedding and bundles of clothes or rugs. The stands had been kept open for the use of the internees in hot or rainy weather, but it was a rule of the camp that everyone must be in his tent at sunset. Shower baths had been installed under the stands and what used to be the players' dressing rooms converted into offices and infirmaries. The majority of the inmates of the camp were sitting about on the stands. Some, however, were strolling on the touch lines and a few squatting at the entrances of their tents, were listlessly contemplating the scene around them. In the stands many of those slumped on the wooden tiers had a look of vague expectancy. What do they do with themselves all day? Taro asked Ramba. Nothing. Almost all, indeed, had empty hands and idly dangling arms. Another curious thing about this multitude of derelicts was its silence. When they first came there was such a din you couldn't hear yourself speak, Ramba said, but as the days went on they grew quieter and quieter. In his notes Taro gives what to his mind would explain this change. He pictures them in the early days bundled together in the tents listening to the buzz of flies scratching themselves and whenever they found an obliging listener shrilly voicing their fear or indignation. But when the camp grew overcrowded fewer and fewer people were inclined to play the part of sympathetic listener so they had no choice but to hold their peace and nurse their mistrust of everything and everyone. One had indeed a feeling that suspicion was falling, dew-like, from the grayly shining sky over the brick red camp. Yes, there was suspicion in the eyes of all. Obviously they were thinking there must be some good reason for the isolation inflicted on them and they had the air of people who are puzzling over their problem and are afraid. Everyone Taro set eyes on had that vacant gaze and was visibly suffering from the complete break with all that life had meant to him and since they could not be thinking of their death all the time they thought of nothing. They were on vacation. But worst of all, Taro writes, is that they're forgotten and they know it. Their friends have forgotten them because they have other things to think about, naturally enough, and those they love have forgotten them because all their energies are devoted to making schemes and taking steps to get them out of the camp. And by dint of always thinking about these schemes and steps they have ceased thinking about those whose release they're trying to secure. And that too is natural enough. In fact it comes to this, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything, by meals, by a fly that settles on one's cheek, by household duties or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live and these people know it all too well. The camp manager came up. A gentleman named Auton, he said, would like to see them. Leaving Gonzales in the office he led the others to a corner of the grandstand where they saw Monsieur Auton sitting by himself. He rose as they approached. The magistrate was dressed exactly as in the past and wore a stiff collar. The only changes Tarrou noted were that the tufts of his hair over his temples were not brushed back and that one of his shoelaces was undone. Monsieur Auton appeared very tired and not once did he look his visitors in the face. He said he was glad to see them and requested them to thank Dr Rieux for all he had done. Some moments of silence ensued. Then, with an effort, the magistrate spoke again. I hope Jack did not suffer too much. This was the first time Tarrou heard him utter his son's name and he realised that something had changed. The sun was setting and flooding through a rift in the clouds. The level rays raked the stands, tinging their faces with a yellow glow. No, Tarrou said. No, I couldn't say he really, he suffered. When they took their leave, the magistrate was still gazing toward the light. They called in at the office to say goodbye to Gonzalez, whom they found studying the duty roster. The footballer was laughing when he shook hands with them. Anyhow, I'm back in the good old dressing room, he chuckled. That's something to go on with. Soon after, when the camp manager was seeing Tarrou and Rombert out, they heard a crackling noise coming from the stands. A moment later, the loudspeakers, which in happier times served to announce the results of games or to introduce the teams, informed the inmates of the camp that they were to go back to their tents for the evening meal. Slowly, everyone filed off the stands and shuffled towards the tents. After all were under canvas, two small electric trucks of the kind used for transporting baggage on railroad platforms began to wend their way between the tents. While the occupants held forth their arms, two ladles plunged into two big cauldrons on each truck and neatly tipped their contents into the waiting mess kits. Then the truck moved on to the next tent. Very efficient, Tarrou remarked. The camp manager beamed as he shook hands. Yes, isn't it? We're great believers in efficiency in this camp. Dusk was falling. The sky had cleared and the camp was bathed in cool, soft light. Through the hush of evening came a faint tinkle of spoons and plates. Above the tents, bats were circling, vanishing abruptly into the darkness. A streetcar squealed on a switch outside the walls. Poor Monsieur Auton, Tarrou murmured as the gate closed behind them. One would like to do something to help him, but how can you help a judge?